Monday, June 10, 2013

The beleaguered, but defiant PM did not
let recent demonstrations in several parts of Turkey derail his plans for a
North African tour early this past week.

First stop in his Maghreb visit was Morocco,
where he was received by his counterpart Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane,
who has long sought to model his Islamist party, the Justice and Development party
(PJD) along the lines of Erdogan’s AKP government.

This was supposed to be an important trip
for both Turkey and Morocco, and a crowning moment for Benkirane’s government.

Any visit from such an important state delegation
is almost always granted a royal séance with His Majesty, King Mohammed VI. This
was particularly expected in this instance, after Morocco’s Minister of Foreign
Affairs Saad Eddine al-Othmani promised his Turkish counterparts that the king
would in fact meet with Erdogan.

To everyone’s surprise and Benkirane’s
embarrassment, the king did not visit with Erdogan during his abbreviated
one-day stay in Morocco. King Mohammed VI was not even in the country, having
been in France since May for undisclosed reasons.
The palace-coopted business association confédération générale des
entreprises du Maroc(CGEM) also
boycotted Erdogan’s visit, refusing to meet with the Turkish prime minister.
Erdogan is said to have been royallyangry at the cold reception he received in
Morocco and with the king’s failure to meet him. A photo op between Erdogan and
Benkriane is telling, showing a tense Erdogan and an uneasy Benkirane, who is perhaps
diffusing the situation and making excuses for his majesty’s absence.

On the next leg of his trip, Erdogan
visited Algeria where he was again snubbed, this time by President Abel‘Aziz
Bouteflika, who coincidentally was also in France at the time.

In Morocco, Erdogan’s visit amplified
discussions about the whereabouts of the country’s sovereign. Was the king avoiding
Erdogan for political reasons? Was it an assiduous move by the palace to
embarrass its embattled PJD-led government? Or was the king simply unavailable
to meet foreign dignitaries for reasons beyond anyone’s control?

In addition to
domestic political reasons, rumors
have been swirling about the king’s long hiatus. Some suggest thatthe king is “gravelyill” and probably
receiving medical treatment in his chateau in Betz, France. The king’s medical
status is a sensitive state issue, about which mere speculation could lead to
judicial prosecution. IdrissChahtane, the editor of the Moroccan weekly news publication al-Misha’al, was
sentenced to a year in prison in 2009 for a story about the king’s health.Neverthless, speculation
about the king’s trips abroad is always rife. Moroccan journalist Ali Anouzlawrote an excellent editorial in the
independent Moroccan news websiteLakome on the king’s recent absence.

Anouzla calculated that between January
and June 2013, the king has been abroad for 57 days, none of which has been
publicly disclosed by the palace. Nor did the king formally empower any other
branch of government to run state affairs in his absence.

Morocco’s monarch, unlike heads of state
in other countries, is under no obligation to disclose his official business or
holiday calendar. The Ministry of Palaces and Protocol and the king’s palace
staff serve at his pleasure, and are not subject to any legislative or judicial
oversight. The king’s movement and related expenses are confidential and are
beyond any form of accountability. His absence is nothing new to the average
Moroccan - most do not even know when he is and is not in the country.

Whatever the reason, there is no doubt
that the king’s failure to meet with Erdogan was a major embarrassment for
Benkirane and an insult to one of Morocco’s important trading partners. Since
the two countries entered into a Free Trade Agreement in 2006, annual bilateral
trade has steadily grown reaching over US$1 billion in 2011,

Despite the
on-going protests in Turkey, Erdogan continues to be among the most popular
figures in the Middle East and North Africa region. The palace knew this visit
could have been a crowning moment for Benkirane’s government, and may have wanted to minimize its
importance to undermine any political dividends that could accrue to the PJD.

The PJD government has scrambled to
dismiss negative reports about the Erdogan trip, arguing that the visit was a
resounding “success.” These days, the PJD is in need of any sort of political
victory, as a schism created within its parliamentary coalition by the Istiqlal
party continues to fester. The Istiqlal’s mercurial Secretary General Hamid
Shabat, announced in May that his party will be withdrawing from the government
coalition with PJD because of differences over planned socio-economic reform
policies of the PJD government. The monarch long seen as the arbiter within a
tightly controlled political environment in Morocco, intervened personally from
his vacation in France to convince Shabat to stay put until his return.

Shabat and Istiqlal have been calling for
greater power within the PJD-led government, and this could be part of a strategy
to force the PJD to reshuffle the government with more ministerial portfolios
given to the Istiqlal. This political crisis also highlights the palace’s role
in diffusing fabricated tension in the Moroccan fragmented party scene. Even
away from the country, the king remains firmly in control of all the levers of
power, as even Shabat is said to be waiting for royal instructions about his party’s
withdrawal. That is whenever the king comes back from his long hiatus, which
seems to have caused quite the stir.

Abdallah Bouanou, the head of the PJD in parliament,
stated that the reasons for cancelation of the royal meeting with Erdogan are
unknown. There is no doubt that PJD is not privy to reasons for the royal
absence, but it is difficult to fathom that within the edifice of a supposed
modern state, the highest echelons of political power have
no clue as to the cause for such poor diplomatic planning.

We may never know the true reasons for this
fiasco, but the fact remains that Erdogan’s visit came and went without the
usual pomp and circumstance accorded to foreign dignitaries of his stature. No
red carpet was laid out before the royal palace, and that has definitely left a
bad taste in Erdogan’s mouth as he continues to fight his own battles at home
in Turkey.

As for the king of Morocco,reports suggest that he will go to Turkey on an official
visit in the near future, perhaps in an effort to make amends for the “snub”,
and personally offer polite excuses his own subjects in Morocco may never hear
about.